Friday, November 30, 2012

Winter Palette

Jewel Tones



Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Pearl and Fluorite...

I am going to have to make a lot of solid color items because these don't coordinate very well. I really wanted to incorporate colors that I haven't used in my palettes from the other seasons.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!


Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Victorian Dress Complete!

No, the hat is not actually part of the costume...

I have finally finished my dress for Rose's Victorian birthday party. This is the most labor intensive project I have ever done but I definitely enjoyed every minute of it! I unintentionally picked a project that forced me to use many new techniques. I have never added trim to anything so that was an adventure, especially in the quantity that this dress required. I also had never made the bunched type overskirt and it to a bit of fiddling to get the folds to look nice. All in all I am pleased with the result.


For this dress I used a heavily modified Vogue 8615 bodice. I used McCall's 4090, View C for the skirt. I just made up the pattern for the bustle/apron thing (I am not really sure what to call the maroon part.) Sorry I don't have a better shot of the details and the apron in the back. I used the pink fabric with the floral print from my stash, so this one counts towards stash busting!


Sunday, November 18, 2012

Sunday Strategy # 6

This week:
  • The Thanksgiving dress. 
    • I am using Vogue 8664 from my stash. 
    • Both my main and lining fabrics are from my stash also! 
    • Hooray for Stash Busting
    • Also counts toward 52 Dresses Project. I am not sure what number it is, but I know I am not close to finished.
Last Week Recap:
  1. Finish my dress for Rose's birthday party. 
       

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Sunday Strategy # 5

This week:

  1. Finish my dress for Rose's birthday party.
Last Week Recap:
  1. Work on my victorian dress for Rose's birthday soiree.
    • I made a lot of progress on the dress. Blogged here.
  2. Finalize the list of all the gifts I need to make for Christmas.
    1. Done and I have made up some of the patterns for the various items I want to craft. I don't want to blog about these projects until after the holidays because a few of the recipients follow my blog.
All in all this was quite a productive week!

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Victorian Dress So Far

Rose is having a Victorian Musical Soiree to celebrate her 18th birthday. We are all supposed to come in costume. I am making a beautiful ball gown for myself! I have never done a project that has embellishments on it. I am not sure why I waited so long to try. They add such dimension to the piece.

Here is the basic dress before so you can see the silhouette. I have a 6 hoop underskirt underneath to give the dress volume. The pink fabric is a light weight home dec fabric that was given to me by a lady at a curtain shop in Philadelphia. They just throw all the fabric that people leave there in the trash so the woman loaded up a few trash bags and sent me on my way. This was about 5 years ago and I am still working my way through all of it. This counts towards my Stash Busting and also my 52 Dresses. I am so going to wear this dress after the party!

Front view (and Punkin.)

Back view

Front view with ribbon flowers pinned on. I am not sure I really like the flowers on the skirt. 
What do you think? Is it just to much?

I do like the flowers on the bodice though. Maybe I will just do this part with the embellishments.

The ribbon flowers and scallops around the bottom of the dress. 
Should I add some lace to the bottom hem?

     


Sunday, November 4, 2012

Sunday Strategy # 4

This week:

  1. Work on my victorian dress for Rose's birthday soiree.
  2. Finalize the list of all the gifts I need to make for Christmas.
Last Week Recap:
  • Finish our Halloween costumes.
  • Make Peony. This is my second priority because there is still a lot of work to do for Halloween.
    • Scrapped... just no interest in making all the adjustments necessary to make this dress wearable. Maybe I will come back to it in the future.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Halloween Costumes

This year we were Steam Punk Vampire Hunters! I just popped Billy in his ren faire costume and gave him a little stake and a cross. Here are my and Brian's costumes. They came out much better than I thought they would.


Here are some other costumes that people wore to our Halloween bash!

Me with Dr. Who and a vampire.

Me staking some vamps!

Mrs. Annie

Matt and Jen

Casey and Lauren